After you register you can browse through their whole website and choose any item up to $1000 as the item you would like to win. You then indicate to them what the item is. You are entered into the giveaway and will get the item you choose if you win. After you choose your item you are given a chance to sign up 5 of your friends.

Each day you can choose a new item. Today I choose a Tom Tom GPS receiver. I just did that to have something to pick for the day. I will spend a bit more time choosing something I really want for the rest of the week. You have a chance to win every day.

At the end of the week they will have a grand prize drawing. If you win you get all 5 items that you chose during the week.

I have one caveat about the contest. They aren’t giving away something for nothing. They are collecting email addresses. If you are already an Overstock customer, they already have your info. But they are asking you to give up the email addresses to 5 of your friends each day. You could potentially sell out 25 friends this way. While I personally trust Overstock to not sell my email address, I would not appreciate my friends giving out my email address to a company without my knowledge. Just choose wisely if you decide to give away someone’s email address. Not everyone will appreciate it.

Some of the benefits include:

• More energy efficient
• Last longer
• Lower fire hazard
• More durable
• Less likely to fail

While the initial cost of the LED lights are more expensive, they cost an estimated 1/3 the price of incandescent lighting over the lifetime of the LEDs. This is because the need to replace the incandescent lights more often will out cost the LEDs in the long term. On top of the overall savings that you will see down the road, you will immediately see a savings in your electric bill. It only takes 10% as much electricity to run a string of LED lights as it does a string of traditional ones.

LEDs are also much more durable. The likelihood that you would damage an LED light just by dropping them is non existent, unlike traditional bulbs. LED lights are encased in an epoxy that is durable to the point of being able to withstand the weight of a tractor trailer rig driving over them!

One of the greatest benefits of LED Christmas lights is the fact that there is much less of a fire hazard with them. Because the lights put off almost no heat, there is little risk of burning yourself by touching the lights or having a dry tree ignited by the LEDs.

Look into LED mini lights this holiday season and see if they would be right for you and your family.

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The Wirefly site has a tool to help you get the best cell phone plan available for your needs. It lets you compare your current plan to what is available.

One of the problems I am having in choosing a plan is that I don’t remember how many minutes per month we used before. It was our primary phone since we traveled constantly. I am thinking it was something like 1000 anytime minutes a month. Sometimes we went over, which was a killer. The Wirefly comparison tool says that the average person uses 477 minutes. That seems low to me.

One thing I don’t completely understand about Wirefly is what their business is. Apparently you can buy phones through them and even purchase your service through them. They are like a broker with the phone providers. I have dealt with a broker before. It was a nightmare. They would certainly have to bring a lot to the table to get me to consider using them instead of working with the provider directly.

I would be curious to know if any of my readers have dealt with them and what the compelling reason is to use them instead of the service provider.

However, I do have to say that they have a great information at their site. They even have owners manuals for many phones. Their site is a treasure trove of information for helping you make an informed decision when purchasing a cell phone plan.

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I have been using different kinds of VoIP service for a few years now. It just gets better and better. Packet8 is a VoIP provider that is offering video phone capabilities. While you can do many of these same things through “soft” phones on your computer, it is nice to have a piece of hardware that you can touch and handle while talking on the phone.

Packet8 has two Video Phone that give you a nice hardware package. This is far easier than getting your web cam set up, finding your headset/microphone combo and getting them plugged in, plus the need to tie up your computer to make a phone call. While I sit at my computer most of the time when I am on the phone, I like to be able to get up and roam around. You can plug a cordless phone into their system and it becomes just like talking on your standard home phone system.

Of their two video phones that they offer, I have trouble deciding which one of the two I would like to have. I have entered into a contest to win 1 of 9 that they are giving away. They have one that is just a video/audio interface. It is a screen with an icon based user interface. You can plug any standard phone into it and use your current phone. Or, they have one that is a desk phone setup with a pop up video screen.

I think of the two, I would choose the desk phone. I would not be transferring the device around the house to different locations. It would be nice to just have it sit on my desk ready to use whenever I needed to make a call.

Their service plans start at $25 a month and include “unlimited local and long distance calling in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands, France, Italy, Ireland, Spain and United Kingdom”!

I found the results to be pretty accurate based on how I view myself. Of course you can get the results you want by answering a certain way. What would be more interesting is if they had a test that your friends could take and evaluate you. That, coupled with how you view yourself, would be much more revealing. Some of the questions were like “How would your friends answer this about you?” I feel like I do a good job at pulling the wool over the eyes of those around me. Very few would believe that I am somewhat insecure and second guess just about every decision I make.

Here are some of the comments the results made about me:

Discipline:
You may like to refer to yourself as “free-spirited,” but in actuality, your schedule tends to be more of a disaster. With a tendency to [sic] toward procrastination and lack of planning, you could use a good lesson in time management.

Ouch!

Risk:
Judging by your responses, “risk” is your middle name. You were born for a challenge, regardless of the cost. And while your willingness to tackle a good adventure may get the adrenaline pumping, at times it is your greatest weakness.

True.

Optimism:
You’ve got a pretty good attitude about life, and while others view you as positive and approachable, you require time away from people. You prefer to surround yourself with quality rather than quantity.

Absolutely! I am a very gregarious person, but I like my personal time. Just leave me alone!

Interpersonal Skills:
Like a Swiss army knife, you have the ability to function in just about any situation. You’ve mastered the art of relationship building and have learned how to use it to your advantage. You’re charismatic, and nobody can deny that you know how to work a crowd.

I like that evaluation.

Take the test. Read further about what it means to “Live in the Two.” There is more to life than making a lot of money, but, the things it takes to make a lot of money are what it takes to have a successful life whatever your passion.

Their news section is full of current news. The latest story (at this time) is a story about the total lunar eclipse that happened last night? Did you see it? My wife woke me up at 4:45 to show me the view. There was just a sliver of the moon showing brightly. The rest you could still see, but was grayed out.

In the reviews section of the site they have digital camera reviews showing how to get better pictures from certain cameras through your telescope. There are also reviews for different astronomy equipment.

Don’t forget to check out their classifieds section. They have almost 1000 items listed for sale. There are not too many items available in their auctions section though.

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But if I had a pressure washer from Car Guy Garage, I would give my engine a good cleaning. The car wash guys don’t do that. When I wash my little car (takes 10 minutes if I don’t have help, 30 if I do), I certainly don’t clean the engine by hand. That is where a good pressure washer would come in handy.

Also prepping a house for paint would be another use of a pressure washer that I would use.

What would you use one for?

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One thing I thought was interesting, and which I appreciated, was that they have accessories for my old phone. I have had the phone for almost 2 years and it was already discontinued when I bought it off of eBay. It is rare that I am able to find any accessories in local stores.

They also sell cell phone batteries at pretty good prices. You can get extended and blinking batteries for some phone models.

They have a good selection of cases and clips.

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I did not know that it was possible to have mold testing done. But there is a service that will send dogs into your home or business looking for mold. They are based in New Jersey. I did not find on their website what areas they service, but it is a cool thing to know that there are services like this available.

We ended up drying out our house as best we could and never had problems. That was 5 years ago and the current owners knew about the problem and have never mentioned anything about mold. I guess we got lucky.

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The results showed that there is more than a 10% CTR through this form of advertising. In other words (as I understand it), for every 100 people who visit a sponsored blog posting, such as this one, more than 10 of them will click through to the advertiser. That is a pretty high number.

In their article they state that their advertising through another popular ad campaign has been only .5 to 1.5% CTR. That is a huge difference in effectiveness. In my own experience with another campaign I have only seen a .3% Click Through Rate–even lower than theirs. This means that the CTR for PayPerPost is quite high. I am not sure though what the CTR of my sponsored posts would be. I am sure PPP knows, but that is not a statistical feature that I am privy to.

My questions to you are: Have you clicked through to the advertisers that I have written about? Have you bought anything from them?

Since I will probably buy a much better camera at a later time, this camera fulfills my desire to have a small, low cost camera that I can take running with me as well as be a great camera to keep handy at all times. I looked at some of the Nikon digital cameras that are available. Especially the smaller compact ones. I like that they use standad SD cards as opposed to a proprietary system like Fuji or Sony.

The Samsung camera won out because it fits all the requirements I had set forth in a previous post. The only rule I broke when buying this camera is that I bought a 2 GB memory card with it. The card only cost $20 and was just $2 more than a 512 MB card. Though that card will hold 600+ pictures at this camera’s best quality, I think it would be foolish to put that many on there. I like to pull the pictures off my camera as soon as possible. I rarely have more than 20 pictures on there before I dump them to the computer, unless I am out to something special for the day and I take a 100 shots or so. But then they get moved to the computer as soon as I can that evening. In the old days if you lost a roll of film to a tragedy, you lost fewer than 40 pictures at the most. If you filled up a card with 600 pictures and had a tragedy, it would be much more devastating. I would encourage anyone to shy away from having your large memory cards maxed out.

I recently saved 253 pictures for a lady who’s memory card got corrupted. It was really just dumb luck that I was able to do so. I was sick about the whole thing because she is someone who highly values her pictures, but has fallen into the trap of buying 1 and 2 GB memory cards and filling them up just because they are cheap.

Digital is becoming much less expensive today. You can get a fairly good quality camera for $100. There is really no reason to do without. With digital you can shoot as many pictures as you like without any further cost. With digital the cost is all up front. When shooting film the cost of the camera is cheaper, but you never stop paying for the privilege to shoot.

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Though I was made aware of this site via a sponsorship deal, I have already subscribed to it through my RSS reader. It looks like something that I want to keep track of for some time.

There is not a lot of content on the site yet, but there is a never ending supply of odd gadgets coming out. The pictures are what make the site. There is some good text as well, but the pictures are what grabs your attention.

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I did not find their site to be overly easy to navigate, but you can certainly find the items you are looking for. Their search function seems to work well if you know the particular product that you want. In fact, I was able to more easily find the items using the search than just their general navigation.

Their prices seem fair. I have not done much comparison shopping, but they do advertise below MSRP. Plus, there is free shipping on all orders of $75 or more.

They even have a pretty good selection of office furniture.

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I guess I have been with them about 2 months and have earned just under $100. I could earn a lot more if I worked it a bit harder. But with all my traveling lately, I think I have done pretty well.

My goal is to be able to buy running shoes and podcasting equipment with this money.

I first heard about PayPerPost almost a year ago when it first started making a name for itself. I was just getting into blogging at that time and did not see much possibility in it. But today I realize that it is a good opportunity to earn a bit of extra cash. Though some people are earning upwards of $10,000 through PPP, I am not dedicating that amount of time or effort. But for the time I am spending, I think the effort is worth the money I am making.

I have been casually reading their blog for about a month and have gained a few good tips. When I first saw the advertising opportunity with them I thought they were just another search engine. But what they do is help you rank better in Google and Yahoo search results.

They provide “for pay” services as well. But I think many people will benefit greatly from just reading their free tips. From there you can decide if they can be more of a service to you.

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